By ART THIEL, SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST

Published 9:00 pm, Wednesday, March 30, 2005

Traditionalists to the max, Mariners bosses did the obvious when confronted with the soaring futility of last season. They fired the manager.

Reasons were never given. But his successor offered up a bit of received baseball wisdom that is as good as any other explanation.

"(Longtime former manager) John McNamara told me the most important relationship I'll have is the relationship with my general manager," said Mike Hargrove. "He's right."

Bob Melvin's GM, Bill Bavasi, was not the guy who hired him. So when the time came to do what all crummy teams do after a bad season -- roll heads -- Bavasi decided he liked his own head where it was.

Melvin's was offed despite the fact that two weeks after Bavasi was hired, he refused to give the Boston Red Sox permission to interview Melvin for their managerial vacancy. Three sources told the P-I's John Hickey, who reported it on Nov. 21, 2003, that Melvin was a leading candidate to replace the fired Grady Little.

That would be the same Red Sox who, stuck with their second choice, Oakland coach Terry Francona, whipsawed the sports galaxy with their improbable championship last fall.

Think about that for a minute. Had Bavasi done then what he did 10 months later -- let Melvin go -- Melvin today would be the toast of the baseball world, and the Mariners would have lost 99 games and fired someone else.

That is, if you believe the theory that most managers most of the time have relatively little to do with outcomes of major league seasons.

Even Hargrove buys the theory. To a point.

"A manager does have less immediate influence over the outcome of a game," he said one day during spring training. "I've never coached another sport, but there are more uncontrollable outcomes in baseball than there are in basketball or football.

"In football, you tackle right, the runner goes down. You run the right route, you throw the ball on the money, and the play works most of the time. You shoot a basketball with the right arc and rhythm, it's going to go in.

"In baseball, you can hit the ball as hard as possible, and if you don't hit where someone isn't standing, you sit down. The pitcher can make the perfect pitch in what the situation calls for, yet the hitter gets just enough of a piece to dump it over someone's head. Those are the uncontrollable situations. There are more of those situations in baseball."

If that's true, why do teams keep firing managers? Unless he's a complete dunderhead -- and the Red Sox, who some think might be the game's smartest organization, certainly didn't believe that of Melvin -- most knowledgeable veteran baseball managers can get the job done as well as the next guy.

As always, teams fire managers because it makes the bosses look like they're doing something.

Maybe they are.

As the accompanying research shows, only 19 teams since the start of divisional play in 1969 have had a winning season following a season of 95 or more losses. That's out of 111 possible teams.

And 15 of those teams changed managers.

So history says a trend is apparent -- if a fast turnaround is desired, new field leadership is among the almost-mandatory requirements.

Even if, the new skipper maintains, players don't much care.

"The choice is out of a player's control," said Hargrove, a 13-year big-league first baseman with a .290 average under 10 managers. "From that perspective, a player doesn't really pay a lot of attention to who gets hired. Once he gets there, he can have an impact.

"There are certain managers who have an impact and certain ones that don't. That doesn't mean players don't play well for that guy. I do know Bob Melvin is very good manager. In situations like Seattle last year, unfair as it was, guys just didn't perform."

One of the charges against Melvin was that he didn't have much impact. In interviews since, Melvin, now the manager of the Arizona Diamondbacks, acknowledged that as a rookie manager, he was deferential, especially toward his bosses, too concerned about what they thought.

"That's a real easy trap to fall into," Hargrove said. "I'd venture a guess that Joe Torre, Bobby Cox and Mike Hargrove have to fight those same feelings. We're not robots. We're people with feelings. We have our feelers out. It's a common tendency that you have to fight."

Hargrove isn't likely to fall into the same trap in Seattle, not after 13 seasons as a manager in Cleveland and Baltimore. He's a saltier, more savvy figure than Melvin, more along the lines of Lou Piniella, who will be the gold standard for all subsequent Mariners managers. As with Piniella, he sees season-long clubhouse management as his top priority.

"Strategic changes in a game have an impact, but a manager has more control over a 162-game season than he does a four-game series," he said. "The manager puts the right people in the right spot at the right time. You do that enough times as a manager, and the talent is there, then you're going to be successful. That's why our game is built on statistics and percentages.

"Since we're around each other more than our families, the clubhouse atmosphere is a big part of a winning effort. You hear about guys good in the clubhouse and on the field, and that's important. It's the job of managers and coaches to keep tabs on the clubhouse."

In Cleveland, he had charge of the volatile Albert Belle, and Kenny Lofton offered up his own case of attitude. But they weren't so disruptive that Hargrove couldn't get the Indians into the World Series in 1995 and 1997.

"You have to manage personalities as much as anything," he said. "It all comes down to respect players have for the manager. Certain things you've done in the game get you instant credibility and respect. But if that's all you live on as a manager, that credibility will last an instant.

"You have to demonstrate the respect they have for you is valid and necessary. They need to feel they should respect you. You prepare for your job as you ask them to prepare for theirs, and you work as hard as they do, if not harder."

Hargrove's career record couldn't be much more down the middle -- a 996-963 mark (.508) in the regular season, and 27-25 (.519) in the playoffs. That may not dazzle, but consider that Torre's record over 14 seasons with the Mets, Atlanta and St. Louis was 894-1,003. Then the Yankees hired him, and he suddenly became great and wise.

Baseball's other Yoda, Cox, was fired in Atlanta and Toronto before being re-hired by the Braves, and didn't reach a winning record until his 10th season.

There's a lot to managing a baseball team, but there's also a good supply of people who can do it. Hargrove is among those who do it, and the Red Sox were among the teams who thought Melvin could do it, too.

In a game of many uncontrollable outcomes, the best strategy for survival may be to have one's mother as general manager.